An antenna array composed of four inclined microstrip Yagi antennas is proposed for a direction finding (DF) system operated in L band. Each element antenna is designed to have a tilted beam toward a central array axis in order to have high gain in the boresight axis of the antenna array. In comparison to a patch antenna array, having the same structure, antenna array gain is improved by a 2.3 dB maximum around the array axis, monopulse slope is increased by 72% and the linearity of the slope is improved significantly. Also, axial ratio is improved by 3 dB max within ±25° from boresight.
A modified proximity-coupled microstrip patch antenna with broad impedance bandwidth is proposed by incorporating proximity-coupled patch antenna into the rectangular open-ended microstrip feed line on a cavity structure. First we design a proximity-coupled microstrip antenna to have a wide bandwidth in the lower band centered at 7 GHz using a cavity-backed ground. To broaden the bandwidth of the antenna to the upper band, we then apply a rectangular open-ended microstrip feed line, adjusting the relative position to the cavity to generate an additional resonance close to 10 GHz. The combination of lower and upper band design results in a broadband antenna with dimensions of 30 mm × 30 mm × 9 mm (0.9λ0 × 0.9λ0 × 0.27λ0) is designed where λ0 corresponds to the free space wavelength at a center frequency of 9 GHz. The measurement results verify the broad impedance bandwidth (VSWR ≤ 2) of the antenna at 77% (5.6–12.6 GHz) while the broadside gain is maintained between 6 dBi and 8 dBi within the operational broad bandwidth.
A strong signal through the antenna sidelobes can be interpreted as a main lobe signal and may cause a major angle error in the direction finding system. An auxiliary antenna channel in the Maisel's sidelobe blanking system increases the cost, and the method using each boresight error (BSE) of the monopulse and interferometer causes many errors in the real antenna. In this paper, a sidelobe recognition method applicable to a wideband uniform circular array without auxiliary antenna channel is proposed. Four boresight errors are obtained from monopulse and interferometer in the circular array and then the maximum value of differences between boresight errors is taken and is compared to the optimal threshold value. The results have the effect of reducing errors occurring in the sidelobe region while maintaining the performance in the main lobe region. To validate the proposed method, a circular array antenna with eight wideband microstrip antennas is designed and manufactured. As a result, there is a significant improvement in the error rate compared to the existing method. It is confirmed that there is no error when the threshold value is from 0.5° to 0.7°at 6, 9, and 12 GHz, and the error rate is less than about 1 % when the threshold value is between 0.4°and 1.0°. INDEX TERMS Array antenna, circular array, sidelobe recognition, sum-delta monopulse, interferometer This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.
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